


City Watch

by savvygui



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Destiny 2, F/F, Fantasy, Gen, Science Fiction, kind of buddy cop-y?, noircore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 09:28:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16553225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/savvygui/pseuds/savvygui
Summary: A newly promoted sergeant of the Last City's police force, the Watch, is charged with investigating a mysterious murder. This case might just make her career, but she might be getting in over her head...





	1. Noir

City Watch Sergeant Katarina Halsey took a shallow breath. On the surface she was level, the picture of a Watch officer, not letting the pit in her stomach show on her face. Red-blue police lights flared as she stepped out of the squad car, her boots splashing through dark puddles.

The officer at the edge of the Watch cordon looked up from his datapad for a moment and waved Halsey through, holding a length of yellow “CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS” tape in his left hand. She stepped over to where two or three junior officers were gathered, making her best effort to straighten out and look professional.

“Evening, men,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “Everything’s in order?”

“More or less, ma’am,” one responded. “We’ve estimated time-of-death and got his identity down.” She cocked an eyebrow at the officer, waiting for more. He looked down at his pad.

“Timon McNamara, white-collar lawyer type. Working for Daito, helped negotiate the deal that bought them the land for that new plant they keep going on about on the news. Looks like he was slated for a long-term partnership as part of his contract, although none of that explains why he’s lying dead in a gutter.”

Then the case was going as planned. The pit in her stomach loosened a little as she made a mental note to commend whoever had been handling it before she showed up.

“Is that it? No suspects, murder weapons, anything?”

“Nope. This is a weird one, ma’am. Lot of questions we need to answer.”

“Such as?”

The man shrugged. “Well, just look at the body, for starters." 

Halsey glanced at McNamara’s corpse as another officer shined a flashlight and was immediately hit with a wave of revulsion. It wasn’t the fact that he was dead, of course. She’d  seen plenty of death both on and off the force. Rather, it was that McNamara had been grotesquely and thoroughly mutilated.

From his head to his toes, the man looked like he had suffered before he died. Patches of salt-and-pepper remained where his hair had been torn away, roughly enough that oozing red showed where his scalp had been shredded. Coin-sized holes dotted his chest in a surgically precise pattern, ten rows of them crusted with blood and drooling rainwater. Halsey had to look away as her eyes glanced sideways at his arms. They had been removed from just above the elbow, the cauterized stumps calling up an image of two burnt, swollen hams.

Halsey steadied herself. She wasn’t going to ruin her first field assignment since her promotion by throwing up all over herself. She was going to breathe, investigate a little more, turn back around, and say something authoritative to her junior officers, something that would look good in a report.

She looked back at McNamara’s corpse and only barely held back the bile as she realized that his eyelids had been cut out.

Halsey did her best to ignore the nausea, trying instead to detach herself and focus on the important details. After calming herself down, the first thing she noticed was obvious: McNamara had died of blood loss, most likely from the puncture wounds. An educated guess put the time of death at a few hours earlier, judging from her briefing and the state of the body, but the rain had almost certainly washed a good portion of his blood away and muddled a good deal of important information.

She turned her attention to the circular holes on the chest, moving from the almost-definite to speculation. What had made the holes? It definitely couldn’t be a chance attack; the precision with which they had been made was almost mechanical. And the clean cuts on the arms— this had to have been planned, but why? What kind of maniac would be chopping people up with professional-grade surgical equipment and a blowtorch?

A glint at McNamara’s feet pulled Halsey out of her reverie. She reached down into the bloody puddle, grabbing something small and pliable. Bringing it up to her face, she realized the object was some sort of cable or tube, made of what seemed to be woven black fabric with a metallic connector on either end, one of which was stained by dark blood.

Suddenly, she heard a commotion towards the front of the cordon and looked up, pausing to drop the cable into a plastic evidence bag. She swore under her breath. Walking towards her crime scene were two helmeted figures, one wearing full combat plate and the other in shin-length, trench coat-style robes.

Guardians. The man in the plate wore a furred mantle over his towering shoulders and regalia of the New Monarchy, but the red mark at his waist was decorated with the same thirty-seven-dot Forces of the City sigil as the one engraved into Halsey’s badge. His shorter partner wore the symbol on a holographic armband, shifting slowly from red to blue.

Halsey gritted her teeth and stepped briskly toward the two warriors. She cleared her throat and prepared to ask their business when the robed one cut her off.

“Sergeant Katarina Halsey? We are here to take over this investigation. Due to external circumstances, the Watch has decided that this is a Tower matter. You are dismissed.”

Halsey stared, open-mouthed, before speaking up. “ _Excuse_ me? Dismissed? This is my case. This is my crime scene. Who the hell are you? Are either of you detectives? Do you even have investigative training?”

The robed one bristled. “We are both official liaisons to the City Watch—”

“Exactly. Liaisons. You aren’t the authority here, I am. Now make yourselves useful, or get out of my cordon." 

Suddenly, the robed one relaxed. “Actually, _we_ are the authority. City Ordinance 426.4.3: ‘Any Guardian working cooperatively with the City Watch or another peacekeeping body may, at any time, assume direct control over assisting personnel,’ to paraphrase a bit.”

Now it was Halsey’s turn to bristle. He had her cornered. She had to do something; she could feel her opportunity slipping away by the second. The pair began to walk past her to the body when she remembered the bag in her pocket and an idea struck.

“Hey. Hey! You two,” she yelled after them, “wait up. I want to see if you have the chops for this, or you’re just taking my command because you’re control freaks.”

The robed one scoffed, but the plated man next to him chuckled lightly. Oddly so for a man his size, Halsey thought.

The officers standing over the body cleared out quickly at the sight of the two warriors, and they and Halsey stood over the body. They looked on in silence for a few moments, until the plated man shook his head. “Damn. Is this what passes for mugging nowadays? Poor bastard must’ve been jumped by a… Well, I dunno what, but something big, angry, and sharp.” 

Halsey blinked. Every Guardian she’d met had treated her with a sort of casual disdain, but the first thing he’d said to her had been an attempt at a joke. He then surprised her even further by removing his helmet, revealing full lips, dark skin, and a mane of frizzy hair tied back in a ponytail.

She–– for she was definitely not a he, Halsey decided–– winked at her, long eyelashes flicking over brown eyes, dark like bitter coffee. Halsey blushed as she realized that she was staring and pretended to be incredibly interested in a nearby wall.

The woman chuckled. “Darla Reno, Titan, Striker, and as you already knew, City Watch Liaison. I wish we’d’ve been able to get to know each other at a better time, but I guess being in the murder-solving business tends to put folks in bad situations. Nice to meet you,” she said, her comfortingly rich voice making the pit in Halsey’s stomach grow paradoxically wider.

Her gauntleted hand dwarfed Halsey’s as they shook. “What do you have on this guy?” she added as an afterthought.

Halsey told her everything the junior officer had said, filling in the gaps with guesses and intuition as she went.

When she was finished, the other Guardian turned to her, droplets of rain sliding down his helmet lens. “No suspects or murder weapon? Not even an estimate?”

Halsey shook her head. “Nope, nothing. The lacerations and severing match what you’d expect from surgical equipment, but as far as we can tell, he died not far from here, and if you’d look around, we aren’t exactly in an area where that kind of stuff is common.” The robed man considered this, turning back to the body.

A short silence followed, broken again by Reno. “I don’t like sounding cliché, but have you got any leads?”

Halsey grinned. This was exactly what she’d been waiting for. “As a matter of fact, I do.” With a flourish, she reached into a pocket on her vest and pulled out the wire in its evidence bag.

The robed man stared at her. “Concealing evidence is a felony,” he said, icy.

Reno coughed and looked away.

“I—” she started, then suddenly, uncharacteristically remembered something from her days in the Watch academy. “Concealment of evidence at a crime scene only applies to civilians and unauthorized personnel. I’m the head officer here, I can ‘conceal’ whatever I want.” 

The robed man clenched his fists. “I already told you, you are not in command anymore. We are. Hand over the evidence or I will place you under arrest.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Halsey said. “I haven’t given verbal consent to defer yet. I’m not out of command yet, technically.”

The robed man froze, then cursed quietly. 

Reno just laughed. “Like the taste of your own medicine?” she asked.

The man simply grumbled something about ‘getting back on task.’

“Right you are,” Reno continued. You had something important to say, ma’am?”

“This,” Halsey said, holding up the bag, “is what was in one of those chest wounds before McNamara died. She crouched down, comparing the size of the connector on one end to the hole, showing how it fit. “A perfect match, as you can see.”

The pair of Guardians considered the wounds for a moment, then looked back up as she continued. “Can either of you tell me what this tube is, exactly?” she asked.

They looked at each other. Reno shrugged, and the Titan’s companion put a gloved hand up to his chin. “It looks as though it is designed to transport fluids, although I confess that I am not sure what or why.”

Halsey nodded. “Exactly right. I’m ninety-nine percent sure that this is— although it’s modified and enlarged— an artificial vein, used in prosthetics and body modding.”

“Body modding? Where’d you learn anything about that?” Reno asked.

Halsey held up her right hand, revealing that her middle and index fingers were bionic replacements.

“Go figure, I guess,” Reno mumbled.

“Fallen shock blades are pretty good at removing appendages,” she remarked offhandedly.

The Guardians looked at her with surprise and something approaching respect. “Wait, you’ve been outside the Wall?” Reno asked, bemused.

Halsey waved the question away noncommittally. “It’s a long story. But anyway, I know someone, a gray market mod saleswoman, who lives close-ish to here. I think she could be able to help us figure out exactly why this was sitting in a puddle next to McNamara. Unless either of you have a better suggestion, of course.”

Neither answered.

“Good. I’m going to go let some of my junior officers know I’m leaving. Be back in a second.” 

With that, Halsey turned and walked away, letting out a sigh of relief. She had saved her career! This case might finally put her in a position where she could have some real action, something more than just paperwork. She couldn’t have wiped the smile off of her face if she tried.

The Guardians watched her go. Reno put a hand on her hip and glanced at her partner. “I like her! What do you think?”

“I will admit that she has an excellent grasp of City law,” he sniffed.

“Mad you got beat?" 

“No, although I wish she had been less… grating.”

“Heh. Speak for yourself. A little common courtesy never hurt anyone, York.”

York crossed his arms, the fabric of his robes shifting. “Whatever you say.”

They were quiet for a little while, watching as the officers passing by pointedly ignored them.

“She did strike me as having an oddly emotional reaction to our presence,” York remarked.

“Well, of course,” Reno shrugged. “Not everyone is just going to lay themselves down for us to walk all over whenever we show up.”

York shook his head. “It isn’t that. It’s like she has something riding on this.”

“D’you think we should let her come with us for the rest of the case?” Reno asked.

“No...” 

York stood, arms crossed, as more rain speckled his leather robes.

“But I think that she will be hard to lose.”


	2. Morph

Halsey, York, and Reno walked through the darkened alleys and cramped concrete passages of the Stacks, greeting no-one and keeping their pace just brisk enough to avoid passers-by. Each dressed in cheap street clothes, following behind Halsey as she remembered the way forward. Guardian armor or a Watch uniform there painted a target as big as the Dreadnaught on your back, and none of them were willing to go in guns blazing.

The Stacks was one of the oldest districts of the City. Unlike the Core district, which had been the political and economic center of the City since its founding, and the Mill district, which housed more than half of the City’s foundries, the Stacks had always been a place of danger and abject poverty. Born out of the poorest shantytowns that had surrounded the Traveler, the district had been walled off some hundred years ago or so, more to keep its residents in than to keep respectable citizens out.

With nowhere to go but up, new buildings were placed on top of old in an attempt to create more livable space, having the inadvertent effect of creating a system of buried catacombs under the ancient stacked buildings— hence the name. What eventually resulted was a dangerous environment where cave-ins and random, messy death were common and expected, but also one where criminal activity could run rampant under the blind eye of the City Watch.

York and Reno were on edge. As Guardians, they were unaccustomed to situations that were out of their control. Halsey had been expertly snaking her way through the favela for them, and they had seen only two people on the streets, both of whom had avoided them completely. Yet still their nerves were palpable.

They took a staircase upward, winding six floors higher into the skyscraping mishmash, thin rays of yellow light shining through fist-sized cracks in the concrete as the City below bustled through the ongoing storm. Reno glanced down at a decrepit man in a rag as they reached the top of the stairway. She couldn’t tell if he was dead or high–– the track marks on his exposed wrist suggested either.

Halsey kept her guard up, avoiding known gang hotspots and doubling back through empty hallways to ensure that they weren’t being tailed. On a less focused day, she would have registered the fading neon signs and stains of human suffering with mute rage, but today wasn’t a day for personal problems.

York stared straight ahead. He had removed his helmet before donning his civilian clothes, revealing flat black hair and eyes that pointed like knives. In fact, everything about him seemed to suggest a knife, from the clipped, cutting way in which he talked to how his chin tapered to a clean-shaven point. Halsey still couldn’t get a read on him.

Eighteen minutes of alleyways and random turns later, the trio stopped in front of an unmarked metal door. Halsey knocked three times, and after a moment the door swung open, revealing a thin Exo wearing a shabby brown tunic.

“Welcome to Fae’s Discount Mods, how can I—” A look of surprise entered the Exo’s orange eyes as she realized who was standing in front of her shop. “Oh, shit— I mean, uh, hey, Halsey, how’s it going? I-I mean how’re the, uh, replacements holding up—”

“Good to see you too, Fae,” she replied smoothly. “And yes, my bionics are working fine, thanks for asking. I trust everything is still… legal around here?”

If Exos were capable of sweating, Fae would be. “Well, um, I had a batch of counterfeit connective fibers come in, b-but rest assured they’ve been disposed of, a-and all of my wares are legally produced and acquired. I even got that license you told me to get last time.”

“I’m just giving you a hard time, don’t worry about it. I’m not here to inspect your shop,” said Halsey, waving her hand dismissively. “My... friends and I need an expert opinion.”

The red-painted Exo relaxed somewhat at that, removing her palm from the pistol tucked into the back of her pants. “Expert opinion? Well, I’m happy to help out a pal, so, uh, come on in, and I’ll see what I can do for you,” she said, turning around to lead them inside.

As they entered the small shop, Reno shot Halsey a curious grin.  _ I’ll tell you later _ , she mouthed back.

Suddenly, Fae stiffened in front of them and whirled around. “What is  _ he _ doing here?” she snapped, pointing an accusing finger at York, who narrowed his eyes angrily.

“What do you mean?” Halsey asked, feigning ignorance.

“Did you not think I would have weapon scanners at the door? He’s got a ten-shot .49 caseless hand cannon tucked into his coat. A Guardian gun. That means he’s either a Guardian or he killed a Guardian and took his ‘cannon. I don’t want either of those possibilities in my store.”

Halsey turned to glare reproachfully at the Warlock. “York, I told you, transmat weapons only. ”

“Transmat? So he is a Guardian, then,” Fae said, one hand moving slowly over the ‘emergency lockout’ button on the side of the doorframe.

York ignored her. “You know how dangerous this place is. I did not want to go in under-armed, of course.” 

Halsey growled. The arrogant bastard was going to ruin their only lead!

Reno just scoffed and gave York an ‘are you serious’ look. “You can literally teleport any gun you want into your hands whenever you want and you think you need to stuff your pistol into your jacket?”

“More efficient than a transmat. Remember, for example, the time you and I were arresting a corrupt official, and—”

“I remember, and you almost got our cover blown because of it. Sort of like, I dunno, here?”

“Oh, our cover would have been blown here anyway. A six-and-a-half-foot tall slab of muscle like you looks ridiculous in civilian clothing.”

“They’re  _ both _ Guardians?!” Fae breathed incredulously. “This day just keeps getting worse and worse.”

“Look, Fae, you can either let them into the store, or I’ll take back what I said about not inspecting it.”

The Exo grimaced, weighing her options, but waved them inside nonetheless. Halsey meant business, and Fae was a businesswoman first and foremost. 

As they entered, York and Reno looked around, more than a little disturbed. Robotic arms, legs, hands, torsos, and other assorted body parts were crammed into every shelf and aisle of the store, which, combined with the dingy lighting, made the shop look like a mad scientist’s basement laboratory. As they passed, York inspected what looked like a sheet of thick black paper, but was labeled ‘Artificial Muscle Fiber— 58.99 Glim/sq. cm’ in neat, precise handwriting.

“So, what exactly do you need my ‘expert opinion’ on?” Fae asked, sidling up behind a bloodstained workbench that served as a counter and operating table.

Halsey produced the evidence bag holding the strange tube from her civilian shirt’s front pocket. “We found this at the feet of a murder victim. I’m pretty sure it’s an artificial vein, although it’s clearly been modified and enlarged. The interesting thing about it is that it looked like it had been plugged directly into the chest of an  _ organic  _ person, not an Exo.”

Fae took the bag, holding it up to the light and studying it closely. “Yeah, I’d agree with you; this definitely is, or was, an arty. Good eye.” She dropped the bag on the table, leveling her gaze at Halsey. “But you and I both know that information isn’t free. If I’m gonna be your consultant, I need a reason to keep this going.”

Halsey slid a golf ball-sized cube of Glimmer over to the Exo, who tucked it into a pocket somewhere on her tunic before continuing.

“I know of a few chop shop modders that use parts like that in organic prosthetics. They’re dangerous, of course, but they’re cheap. Downside is that you have to replace ‘em pretty often, and rejection is uncomfortably common on top of that.”

York held up a hand to stop her. “My partner and I are... unversed in the field of body modification. Could you explain what the significance of all this is?”

Fae glanced at Halsey, who rolled her eyes and tossed her another Glimmer chunk.

“Sure. This thing— an artificial vein— is a core part of Exo ‘biology.’ It somewhat like a blood vessel, except instead of pumping blood, it transports a conductive solution which is capable of relaying electrical signals from the brain to the rest of the body. It’s the backbone of the Exo nervous/circulatory system,” Fae explained. “And by the look of it, it’s a widened pulmonary artery, so it would carry a pretty large amount of that conductive fluid at once.”

Halsey grunted thoughtfully. “There were a lotta holes that size in the guy’s chest. Why would someone be trying to pump a hundred times that much fluid into him?”

Fae snorted, momentarily forgetting to ask for more cash. “A hundred times? That much could kill a horse, let alone a human.”

“Pretty sure he died of blood loss, not energy drink overdose,” Reno remarked.

“Yeah, this is definitely bloodstained, alright… Wait…” Fae looked closer at the vein, then pulled it out of the bag and put it under a device that looked like a cross between a jeweler’s loupe and a microscope.

“This isn’t blood at all!” Fae exclaimed. “It’s electrolyte fluid, although why it’s red instead of clear is a mystery to me.” She examined further, professional curiosity overtaking greed for the moment.

Halsey stood over her shoulder, and Fae let her look into the device. She saw a strangely metallic-looking red splotch, under which was the gray connector. “I’m guessing those little metal sparkles you’re seeing are an additive, probably to increase overall conductivity at the cost of consistency,” the Exo said.

“Why are they moving?” Halsey asked, looking up from the lens.

Fae cocked an eyebrow, then pushed her away and turned a dial on the device’s side, increasing the magnification. “What the hell?” she exclaimed, tearing her head away.

Halsey peered into the microscope and was equally baffled. Magnified, the shiny flakes looked like glossy black diamonds, swimming and moving and  _ changing  _ throughout the fluid. As she watched, one of them burrowed into what was unmistakably a red blood cell— Fae had only been half-right— and began replacing parts of it with a steely overcoat.

York and Reno had their turn to look at it too, and neither had any explanation for the tiny machines. They didn’t need to, however, as Fae suddenly spoke up.

“Nanites,” she said, not quite believing her own words. “There are Traveler-damned nanites in there.”

Reno grimaced. “Those've been banned for centuries, almost since the City was founded. Nobody knows how to make 'em, and the Consensus has kept it that way."

York inhaled sharply. “The things you could do with those… We could bring back the Golden Age with technology like that."

Halsey simply scratched at her chin. “Why were they being pumped into McNamara’s bloodstream?”

Nobody really had an answer to that, and they sat in silence, thinking.

“Hybridization,” said Fae, a look of shocked disgust on her face.

They never found out what she meant by that.

In an instant, the steel door exploded inward, and a torrent of gunfire poured into the shop, ricocheting off of shelves and replacement body parts. The four dove for cover or were knocked to the floor, reeling in the shock of the surprise attack.

When the assault slowed for a moment, York and Halsey drew their pistols and returned fire. The deep boom of the Warlock’s hand cannon underscored the pop-pop of the Watch officer’s sidearm, each spraying the doorway in lead.

The hastily-fired shots did little as their assailants ducked out of the entrance, and when York and Halsey hunkered down to reload, the attackers moved forward, firing their rifles sporadically on full auto. Halsey recognized the technique–– one gunman would fire at a time, working in shifts to conserve ammo and keep enemy combatants pinned while the group as a whole worked their way up.

Halsey cursed as she slid a fresh magazine into her weapon. That was a paramilitary technique, certainly not something that common gangers would use. They were dealing with something much, much worse.

But she had the power of Guardian ordnance on her side.

The glowing blue outline of a weapon in Reno’s hands finally realized itself, and she racked the shotgun in one smooth motion before rising out from behind the desk and taking the leftmost man’s head off with a barrage of buckshot. Another blast sent his two companions scrambling for cover, spilling bionic fingers onto the floor and riddling the walls behind with holes.

York, seeing an opportunity, vaulted over the desk, sprinting forward to flank the enemy. The sheer brainless bravery of the act almost made Halsey yell out in confusion, but her training kicked in instead and she peppered the racks and aisles of metal limbs in pistol rounds, keeping the Guardian covered.

One of their assailants rasped angrily at the attack, hefting his rifle and paying no attention to the near-black blood pouring from where Halsey had clipped him a few seconds before. He also failed to pay attention to York, who rounded the corner and put two .49 rounds into the grimy, robed man’s chest before he could so much as blink.

His companion, however, was wise to the strategy. He sent a burst of fire towards York, one bullet catching the Warlock in the arm and making his return shot ping off of the ceiling. The gunman backed up, putting a healthy distance between himself and York as he prepared to finish the Guardian off, but a single nine-millimeter bullet through the temple dropped him like a stone as he unwittingly exposed himself.

Halsey kept her pistol raised, covering the entrance to the shop, but nothing further came their way. As the adrenaline started to wear off, she let out a shaky breath. Had she been holding it the whole time?

York stood up out of cover, brushing concrete dust off of his pants, the wound in his arm knitting itself shut. “I told you a concealed weapon was more efficient.”

Reno was about to respond, but Halsey cut her off with a panicked cry. Behind them, Fae was lying on the floor in a puddle of her own clear electrolyte fluid. The orange lights in her eyes flickered unsteadily, threatening to go out. She had taken a round in the chest and fallen unnoticed during the fight.

Halsey bent over her body, trying to figure out what to do. Even though they viewed each other with more than a little distrust, Halsey had liked the nervous Exo, and she had done her best to help them. 

Reno poked her head out of the door as she reloaded her shotgun, then turned back to Halsey, determined. “We don’t have time for her. More will be coming; we have to move.”

Halsey opened her mouth and was about to say something truly venomous when she noticed that York had quietly knelt down next to Fae’s body, holding his hand out over her chest. An orange-white glow surrounded it, and the shattered metal began to glow in kind. He stopped after a few moments, his Ghost materializing at his shoulder. 

“That should stabilize her for at least a little while. Kelu, I need you to get the ship and fly this woman to the Tower medbay as fast as you can.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t have any arms to carry her with,” the blue-shelled Ghost remarked.

“Just get it done!” York snapped, and Kelu nodded and vanished. A few moments later, they heard the rush of jumpship engines outside the shop, and the grievously wounded Exo was transmatted out from under them. The ship then roared and accelerated toward the Wall, kicking up a spray of debris in its wake. As they ran outside in pursuit of the third assailant, Halsey wondered at York’s selfless act.

“What did you do to her?” she asked.

“An old Warlock technique. She will be stable by the time the medics can attend to her. I will be a little shaky until Kelu returns, but I will be able to fight.”

Halsey was quietly astounded. York was capable of compassion? Less than an hour ago, he had deliberately ignored her and nearly gotten them found out or worse, and now he was selflessly saving some woman he’d never met before.

Well, Halsey reminded herself, today had been full of surprises. She’d though Guardians were holier-than-thou killing machines intent on looting in the name of the City, but Reno had proved her wrong. She’d thought that Warlocks were supposed to be smart, but York had put a lid on that. She’d though Reno was a  _ man _ , for Light’s sake.

She flinched, back in the real world, as Reno yelled an alert and fired another deafening shot at something as she leaned out the door. “More company,” she said, ejecting the spent shell, “heading east. Let’s get going.”

York and Halsey checked their weapons and sprinted out the door after the thundering Titan.   
  



End file.
